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Request for Proposal

SAN Replacement

November 19, 2015

INTRODUCTION

Southwestern Oregon Community College will replace an existing data Storage Area Network (SAN) with a new one that has more speed, more features, and greater capacity.

PROPOSAL SYNOPSIS

Southwestern Oregon Community College will replace an existing SAN with a new one that has more speed, more features, and greater capacity. This RFP is for the purchase of a SAN for the existing primary server room only. Southwestern Oregon Community College will also be considering the option to acquire appropriately sized compatible switching hardware, as well as consider the installation of the switching equipment or SAN by the service provider.

This SAN is primarily intended to house Microsoft Cluster Shared Volumes (CSVs) for use by six existing Dell PowerEdge R730 servers hosting clustered Hyper‐V virtual machines. Each server should have at least two 10 gigabit connections to the storage. The connections must be through two different switches (switches yet to be purchased and will be used solely for storage). The storage must have multipath support so that connection to the data is not disrupted in the event of a failed switch or failed storage controller.

DEFINITIONS

Service provider ‐It is a provider of parts or services, and is otherwise known as a “contractor” or “vendor”.

“Must” and “Shall” ‐Indicate the state of being mandatory and not optional. In this document, all requirements that “must” or “shall” exist or take place are required in order for a proposal to be considered.

“Should” – Indicates a preference for something. Proposals with stated preferences included will be scored higher than those without.

“Can”, “May” and “Could” – Indicate an option for which there is no preference for or against. Such options are stated to provide suggestions/guidance to the service provider.

“Usable Capacity” and “Usable Storage Capacity” – This is the amount of data storage space left for use by The College after the SAN is fully installed and configured for production use, including the setup of the RAID volumes, and including after the SAN software is loaded onto the array, if applicable.

INSTRUCTIONS TO BIDDERS

1) Date and Place ‐Proposals can be emailed to sanrfp@socc.edu and must be received before Thursday, January 7, 2016 at 4:00 p.m. Pacific Time (Please do not attach zip files, they are blocked by our email filter). An automatic reply will provide confirmation of receipt of the email.

2) Submitting Proposals ‐The submitted proposal must be valid for a period of sixty (60) days from the closing date. Proposal submissions must include:

(a)

A complete copy of this document with the company name filled in on the title page

(b)

Signed statement (provided herein) from authorized signatory of service provider indicating their agreement to stand behind the proposal submission and its quotes

(c)

A proposal which includes all mandatory requirements and all information asked for within the Proposal Details section below, as well as details of any optional components described by the proposal details

(d)

Supporting documentation about the service provider detailing its experience and its abilities to perform the included scope of work proficiently and within the guidelines of this RFP

(e)

Minimum three (3) valid references for relevant work performed, only if installation or configuration services are included in proposal

(f)

Indicate if any training is included or required (including costs) to properly install and operate the equipment

(g)

Estimated dates of deliverables

3) Acceptability a) If proposals are incomplete, unsigned, conditional, illegal, obscure, illegible, or contain conditions not called for, reservations, erasures, alterations, or irregularities of any kind, they may be rejected. Late proposals will be rejected.

b) Dates for deliverables: The College reserves the right to reject a proposal if estimated dates of equipment delivery or estimated date to perform installation and configuration, if applicable, are deemed unreasonably distant in the future.

(i)

Delivery of equipment is preferred to be within 30 calendar days of proposal being awarded.

(ii)

Installation and configuration, if included as an optional component of the proposal, is preferred to be completed within 45 calendar days of proposal being awarded

4) Costs a) The proposal costs should be Best and Final pricing. The college will not negotiate price with losing proposals after the submission deadline.

b) For proposals that include one or more of the stated optional components below, costs of all included optional components must be separated out from the rest of the proposal as well as from each other.

c) Travel and per diem, if applicable to proposal, must be included and separated out from the rest of the proposal.

d) All costs for the proposal must be included within proposal. Any and all other costs not specified must be absorbed by the service provider.

6) General Southwestern Oregon Community College reserves the right to:

a) Reject any or all proposals. Lowest or any proposal not necessarily accepted.

b) Choose the proposal based on a lowest evaluated bid, which includes, but is not limited to, costs. Lowest evaluated bid is based on scoring on several factors below.

c) Withdraw or amend this RFP at any time. d) Reject proposals from parties without reasonable acquaintance with the class of equipment or work specified.

e) Negotiate with the awarded service provider for adjustments in their proposal.

f) Accept or reject any combination of the optional components provided by the service provider as part of the proposal. g) Ask service provider for clarifications on details of proposal.

5) Scoring ‐Scoring of the proposals is based on the following items:

a) Vendor Qualifications

a) Stability, experience and abilities

b) Maintenance/support capability

c) References

b) Degree to which criteria in this RFP are met

c) Quality of goods and services offered

d) Perceived value of features in solution

e) Scalability

f) Performance

g) Capacity

h) Ease of implementation/management

i) Delivery schedule

j) Costs 6) Advertising Awarded service provider cannot advertise that any work, products or services were provided to The College without first obtaining the express written permission from The College. Southwestern Oregon Community College will provide express written permission upon satisfactory and complete implementation of winning proposal, if requested.

7) Implementation Incompatibility

Awarded service provider must acknowledge that if the proposed solution cannot be successfully installed in The College’s environment due to hardware or software incompatibilities that cannot be resolved by the service provider, then the solution will be returned to the supplier at no cost to The College.

PROPOSAL DETAILS

Mandatory Requirements. The SAN Must:

Be in a new factory condition with full warranty

Include at least a five (5) year parts and labor warranty

Include replacement of broken and worn out parts under the parts warranty

Include software support for at least five (5) years

Have at least 40 TB of usable capacity of which at least six (6) TB must be solid state storage.

Include automatic sub‐LUN tiering, if more than one tier of storage is in proposal

Be certified to operate with Microsoft Server 2012 environment

Run on at least two fully redundant AC power supplies Preferred Features. It is Preferred that the SAN:

Include snapshot features

Include deduplication features

Include compression features

Include RDMA features (SMB3, Multichannel Direct) over Mellanox 40GBE

Allow pinning of data to solid‐state storage

Include at least 60 TB useable capacity, before deduplication or compression

The Proposal Must Specify:

The amount of Usable Storage Capacity of the SAN before compression or deduplication (see above definitions)

The amount of Raw Storage Capacity of the SAN

The number and size (2.5” or 3.5”) of empty drive slots that are available/remaining (if any) in the proposed configuration

The number, capacities, and speeds of the drives included

The RAID levels supported

Rated IOPS and MB/s throughput specifications

The amount the SAN storage capacity can be expanded to in the future without the need for additional licenses or keys. In other words, what is the storage capacity limit from a licensing perspective

The costs of additional drives

The amount of vertical space the SAN solution takes up (excluding switches) in a standard 19” wide four pedestal rack (answer measured in 1.75” U’s)

The number and types of storage tiers in proposal

The number of storage tiers that the automatic sub‐LUN tiering supports

Whether the auto sub‐LUN tiering is autotuned, or whether it has to be configured or adjusted by The College over time

The auto sub‐LUN tiering schedule options

How many network interfaces are included, specifying how many are reserved for data versus for management if applicable

Hardware and software support features that are included, such as details about warranty for parts or labor, travel costs, on‐site/phone/email support, etc

What times within the term are there coverage (i.e. 24x7, 8x5)

Whether the solid‐state storage in the solution is configured as a cache or as actual storage, and whether the SSD storage can be configured in the alternate way if The College so chooses

What support options exist or can be obtained after year five

What entity provides each of the included kinds of support (the vendor or the manufacturer)

Whether deduplication acts immediately or on a schedule

Whether compression acts immediately or on a schedule

What the snapshot limits are (i.e. snapshots per volume, etc)

What licensing is included in proposal, and what other licensing options exist

If replication is included or available

What kinds of mounts or railings are included to mount the SAN within a rack

If the solution is customer installable

If there are any components that are NOT hot swappable

Optional Components:

(For proposals that include one or more of the stated optional components below, costs of all included optional components must be separated out from the rest of the proposal as well as from each other).

The service provider at its own discretion may include any combination of the following optional components in the proposal:

The option for service provider to include two appropriately sized and classed switches in the proposal (must specify makes and models)

Installation and configuration of the entire SAN proposal

Add two additional years of both hardware and software technical support and updates, to bring the total support coverage to seven (7) years

Addition of a cold spares package

CERTIFICATION

I hereby certify, on behalf of the Company I represent, that the information and prices supplied as part of this proposal are accurate, and that the costs for any errors contained herein will be borne solely by the Company I represent.

Further to the above, I hereby certify that this proposal is submitted without any connection, knowledge, comparison of figures, or arrangements with any other company, firm or person submitting a proposal for the same.